Bryolog 40 (22 May 2025)
Upcoming
As a general policy, check the website for event updates before you walk out the door!
- 26–30 July 2025, American Bryological and Lichenological Society (ABLS) meeting in Palm Springs, CA. MORE
- SO BE FREE 30 will be held at the end of March or beginning of April 2026 in San Diego County.
- Submit your bryophyte photos to the CalFlora May photo contest.
Quarterly Report
- A warm welcome to incoming board members, Jake Bauer as Secretary, and Chris Coshland as Field Trip Director. MORE
- Congratulations to the recipients of our student travel scholarships: Zane Walker, Jake Bauer, Frey Rogers and Zoe Antonoff—see you all at SO BE FREE!
- Day Tripping for Dacryophyllum MORE
- Recap of recent monthly meetings HERE. More to come on 4th Thursdays.
Timeless Bits
- Bryum flabelliforme sp. nov, a North American species with unusual rhizodal tubers. by David R. Toren, John R. Spence, James R. Shevock, Jan Larrain
- David Wagner’s fernzenmosses.com is being updated on a new server. Attendees of our upcoming SO BE FREE in Humboldt County are encouraged to check out the Botanical Keys section; the “Important Bryophyte Habitats of Western Oregon” is easy to use and particularly helpful for beginners and bryotourists, and the “Guide to the Liverworts of Oregon” is invaluable for more advanced students.
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Botany 2025 coming up in July
26–30 July 2025, the American Bryological and Lichenological Society (ABLS) will be meeting in Palm Springs, California as part of Botany 2025 (see: https://2025.botanyconference.org/). ABLS meets only rarely in California, so this is a special opportunity for us to interact with colleagues from across the continent. There will be interesting talks and posters, as well as an ABLS mixer. Note that there is a lower registration rate for Amateur Botanists (defined as a non-professional, non-academic individual with botanical interests) which fits many of our members.
Our chapter is co-organizing a wonderful field trip associated with the meeting, Field Trip 8 here: https://2025.botanyconference.org/botany-2025-field-trips.html#sunday. This will be an exciting trip going up the Palm Spring Aerial Tram to subalpine forest and riparian zones at about 9,000 ft.
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Welcome New Board Members
It is with great appreciation that we welcome Jake Bauer and Chris Coshland as our newest members of the CNPS Bryophyte Chapter Board. Jake, our new secretary, is a graduate student at Cal State LA, studying the moss Triquetrella californica in Kirsten Fisher’s bryophyte ecology lab. Jake has been volunteering on the Torrey Pines Bryophyte and Lichen Survey project led by Chris Coshland for the last two years, and their favorite moss is Gemmabryum brassicoides. Chris Coshland, our new Field Trip Director, is a botanist specializing in nonvascular plants, who has done survey work with the U.S. Forest Service and BLM for 20 years, and continued surveys with various agencies for additional 8 years after that. Chris has extensive experience obtaining permits, communicating with agencies, planning surveys and coordinating groups of surveyors. Her favorite finds are rare species.
A big thank you to Bill Thiessen, who has served as Field Trip Director for the past two terms—that’s 4 years of helping to organize and run our beloved SO BE FREE! Amanda Heinrich will be signing off after eight years as the Assistant Secretary in charge of Bryolog and two years as Secretary.
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Day Tripping for Dacryophyllum
On April 13, 2025, a group of bryologists revisited the type locality of the globally rare moss Dacryophyllum falcifolium on the south fork of Fall Creek near Felton, in honor of visiting bryologist Bill Buck (retired from New York Botanical Garden), who is a specialist on pleurocarpous mosses worldwide. We found this small but strikingly different moss doing well on calcareous boulders in secondary forest protected within Henry Cowell Redwood State Park—so it’s hopeful that this survivor can continue to thrive for millions of years to come.
Dacryophyllum falcifolium is ranked as 1B.3 by CNPS. This moss is a paleoendemic (meaning a range-restricted taxon on its own long evolutionary branch with no close relatives) found only in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties of California. It was discovered only recently, in 1999, by Ken Kellman (pictured below), then named as a monotypic genus in 2004 by Robert Ireland.
Its common name is the “tear-drop moss,” referring to the appearance of drop-shaped bumps on the basal-most cells of the leaf and the downward-pointing leaves lending it a weeping appearance. Sex organs are unknown and there is no known sporophyte, making this one of a number of curious mosses that seem to have given up sexual reproduction.
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Monthly Meeting Recap
During the BryoChatter portion of our 27 February 2025 meeting, Stacey Anderson shared a link to the recorded presentations of the New Mexico and Colorado Bryophyte Beginnings group on the Bryophyte Beginnings YouTube channel. Check it out and subscribe!
For our Today’s Taxon segment, Peter Alpert (Professor Emeritus of Biology at UMass, Amherst) highlighted Schistidium maritimum, the splashiest moss around, which is able to tolerate the high solute concentration of seawater, but curiously doesn’t bother growing further inland in seemingly more hospitable habitats away from the splash zone.
Nickte Mendez then shared her master’s thesis work on a photographic key to the Orthotrichaceae in California—if you have an Orthotrichum to key out, this is absolutely the way to go! Paul Wilson has several others in the works and made a plea to chapter members to eventually complete the entire California eFlora keys as these user-friendly versions. Paul and Nickte will be updating the Orthotrichaceae key this summer—stay tuned.
At the 27 March 2025 meeting, Jason Brooks presented “Syntrichia lithophila: the shyest moss at the party.” Jason has found a few occurrences, and a lot of absences where he’s looked imagining the species’ niche might include such habitat.
Liat Adler followed with “The curious case of Hornwort pyrenoids: what we know and what we don’t.” The assembled audience was impressed and enlightened.
For our 24 April 2025 meeting, Stacey Anderson introduced us to Didymodon anserinocapitatus, a cute, elusive moss with a handful of known occurrences in the Western Hemisphere. One might think that a moss with a goose-head shaped leaf would be easy to identify, but D. anserinocapitatus appears like D. rigidulus in almost every way, and Stacey helped us to distinguish between the two species, primarily by looking at guide cells.
David Wagner then shared a multitude of lighting tips for photomicrography, including the addition of incidental light using bicycle lamps on clamps, diffusing light with the likes of ketchup cups and film containers, and suspending specimens on a needle so that they are floating in space. Above all, David encouraged us to keep experimenting. For more tips and a taste of David’s incredible photography, check out his website, fernzenmosses.com.
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